


Bad Luck Wind

by mccorncob



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, McGenji Friendship, Slow Burn, oh god I haven't written fic in ten years how do I tag things, rescue adventure, wilderness mccree
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 04:36:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8190344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mccorncob/pseuds/mccorncob
Summary: A series of strange, ominous messages from Genji unsettle McCree and pull him out of hiding for the first time in years. 
Finding and helping his friend might mean revisiting parts of his past he's happier leaving alone. It might also mean allying with Genji's suspicious brother. McCree's not sure which one of those appeal to him less.





	

McCree goes underground after he leaves. Two years after the PETRAS Act becomes law, he reaches out to a handful of former comrades.

Genji is the only one who responds--he’s somewhere in Central Asia. Two months later he sends McCree a grainy picture of a monastery surrounded by snowcapped mountains. He mentions something about inner peace, and McCree is glad.

After that shit-show down in Texas, Genji sends him a link to a news article. His attached message just reads, “ _what a mcfuck up_.”

He sighs, and reads the message again. He doesn’t read the article. His reply is short, “ _going away. Dont kno how long. thx._ ”

He goes as far as he can without crossing an international border, and ends up in the middle of nowhere, Maine.

He’d been up here, once, years ago--he and Reyes had been on an op together and it’d gone straight to hell. They needed someone to hide out, and Reyes took him miles into the wilderness, to a rotting old trapper’s cabin.

It’s not hard to find the cabin. He’s easily mistaken as a hiker on the Appalachian Trail, loaded with supplies--and after three miles he drops off the trail and veers east, past swamps and  boulders wrapped in overgrown tree roots.

The cabin is just as they left it. It feels strange, being here alone, but so does everything, these days. No use bellyaching about it.

Over the next couple of weeks he hauled up enough cigarettes (couldn’t find a goddamn cigar or cigarillo out here to save his life), booze, and MREs to last him till the end of days. Once he ran out of excuses to make the trek back to civilization, he started mapping his surroundings.

The old map he and Reyes had left behind was gone. Eaten, probably. Or stolen--didn’t matter. It was years ago, and he didn’t want to dwell on it.

He’d brought a basic map from a gas station when he’d first rolled into the area, and now he spent his days marking streams and cliffs that the original cartographer had missed. Once he got bored of MREs, he added other information to the map, as well--best places to fish, best places to hunt.

(McCree loved Peacekeeper, but she was for business, and no man in his right mind would hunt with a damn six shooter. For hunting he picked up an old rifle and several cases of ammo. The first time he fired it, it cut through the silence so loud he was sure someone would come looking for him. They didn’t.)

Weeks dragged into months. McCree rarely thought of anything as being safe, but this was probably as close as it got--not a damn soul knew he was out here, so not a damn soul could come to collect the bounty on his head.

Safe, but lonely. 

Each passing month deepened the feelings of sadness and isolation. He dodged hikers and loggers alike, fearful they would recognize him, but it was hard--he just wanted someone to talk to, goddamnit. The press of dense, green forests was too much. Some days he hiked as far as he could, up to the highest point, and looked out around him to try and feel some sense of freedom--he missed the open, scrubby valleys of home. At  night he dreamed of trying to run but being caught in the underbrush.

He only starts to really grasp how long he’s been out here when winter starts to settle in.

There’s a bite in the air, and the distinct ache where skin meets the metal of his left arm always means snow. He goes south, then up, up, up, to the highest vantage point within a day’s hike. He’s huffing and puffing, the cold air burning his lungs, by the time he’s reached the top of the mountain. He drops down on a the flattest rock he can find, heaves a breath.

“Goddamn,” He breathes, sucks in another painful breath. “ _Goddamn_.” 

He needs a cigarette. 

It’s easy to find the cigarettes--a shitty local brand--but McCree can’t find his lighter. He curses, unzips his coat and fishes around in the inside pockets. He hasn’t worn this coat probably since last _year_ , it was old and heavy and somehow smelled like horses, of all goddamn things. He fishes out old dollar-bills, candy wrappers, but no goddamn lighter. 

Just as McCree starts to get pissed, thinking he’d left it back in the cabin, one of his pockets started beeping.

He freezes. It sounds just like his comm.

It couldn’t be his comm. Damn, he was half sure there was no signal out here, anyway. It was half the reason he’d come up here.

The beeping continued.

McCree gave into curiosity, and finds his comm where it’s slipped in a hole of the coat’s lining.

(His fingers brush against the forgotten lighter.)

His hands are shaking as he silences it.

Surprised, but quietly pleased, he sees several messages from Genji. He opens the oldest first. Each come dated several weeks apart.

_Jesse:_

_After much meditation, I have decided to reconcile with my brother. I can only find peace in forgiveness. I, too, have done dishonorable things. I must forgive him._

McCree tenses. He remembers Genji, when they first met--skittish, mean, distrustful. He remembers Genji distraught, unmoored, his own body an alien, frightening thing. The mere mention of his brother’s name sent him into uncontrollable rages or deep depressions.

_Jesse:_

_Hanzo is not as I remember him. Perhaps this is a good thing._

McCree likes to think of himself as a forgiving person, but he’s probably not.  He ashes his cigarette, disbelieving, and opens the final message.

_Jesse:_

_It’s good to have a brother again._  

Each message feels stilted, and McCree has no trouble imagining Genji writing and rewriting them. It’s not like him to be meticulous and careful. Worry chews at his gut, and he lights a second cigarette. 

( _Wasn’t I like a brother to you? Wasn’t that good enough?_ He thinks, bitterly, and is instantly guilty.)

He wonders if the signal is good enough to write a response.

“ _I miss u_ ,” he types, then backspaces. It’s true, but the truth of it embarasses him. Isolation out here must be getting to him. He exhales smoke through his nose, and then, “ _r u ok?"_

Huffing, he backspaces that one, too. Finally he settles on, “ _plz be careful_.”

The message takes the length of another cigarette before it sends.

He goes back down to the cabin, worried and unsettled.

\---- 

That night, he dreams about Genji.

A shadowy figure takes apart his friend’s cybernetic armor, piece by piece. McCree is powerless to help him. When the figure removes his faceplate, he whispers, “ _it’s good to have a brother again_.”

McCree wakes up in a cold sweat.

\---

There’s not much for him to do out here but worry. It doesn’t seem right--it doesn’t seem right that a man who would do what Shimada Hanzo did to suddenly turn contrite. 

He has the dream, three nights in a row, and he hikes back up to the mountain to watch the sunrise and catch a signal.

He perches on the same rock, looks over the rising sun turning lakes and rivers red as blood. 

Three messages from Genji. One is blank. The other is a series of jumbled, nonsense words. The third is a grainy picture, a blur of green and gray. He can’t quite tell what it is. Something is _wrong_ , and he doesn’t know what.

He goes hunting that night, and misses a shot for the first time in ten years.

McCree tells himself he’s being paranoid.

\--

The thing is--the thing is--

McCree doesn’t have much. He’s alright with that. But in the years since he fled Blackwatch and Overwatch both, Genji has been the only person who has reached out to him, who has tried to maintain any kind of relationship. 

He remembers watching snow fall with him in Geneva, smoking, laughing and swapping old stories. Both of them Blackwatch agents, drifting on the edges, hauled in against their will. They understood each other. They watched out for each other.

He just--how could he sleep at night knowing one of the few friends he had left could be in trouble?

\---

He starts making the hike up the mountain every damn day, desperate for any new messages. Loneliness and isolation feel like a physical ache, now, and he’s almost sick with worry.

The next message that comes through as he smokes on the mountain top doesn’t come from Genji.

It comes from Winston. 

He reads the recall order more than once before he really processes what he’s reading.

It doesn’t make _sense_. None of this does. He can’t reconcile the these messages with the truth of the life he’d been living for years now.

He reads the order again, and feels nothing. He doesn’t quite believe it. He must be imagining it. Isolation has clearly done something to his head--the deepening cold has scrambled his brain.

Two days after the recall order, he’s still heard nothing from Genji.

He feels like he’s going mad.

McCree gathers his most important possessions, and goes back to town.

\-- 

There’s an old screen above the bar playing news. It’s muted and the closed captions are pretty poorly put together, but McCree isn’t paying much attention to that.

They’re playing old Overwatch footage--for a while it was clips of Commander Morrison’s speeches, sunlight shining golden on his hair. Then it flickered to Commander Morrison, distressed, speaking to a group of protesters.

McCree hasn’t decided what he thinks about the recall. Even watching the news coverage about it feels unreal. He’s not sure _what_ Winston was thinking--at the end, Overwatch was an incestous shit-show too fraut with petty rivalries and dark secrets.

And recalling old Blackwatch members? That was a disaster waiting to happen. He recognized more than a handful of old Blackwatch comrades during his run-ins with Talon, and he wondered, a little helplessly, how many of them had gotten the order, too. Bad news. Bad goddamn news.

He finished his beer, tipped his hat the bartender, and slipped back to his room.

That night, as he’s disassembling and cleaning Peacekeeper, his comm rings. 

It’s the only coherent message he’s gotten from Genji in months. It just reads, “ _jesse?_ ”

Something twists in McCree’s gut. He responds, fingers shaking. “ _Wher r u. r u ok_ ”

Seconds drag into minutes as he stares at his comm, waiting. Someone’s thumping around in the room above his, and his next door neighbor is watching TV too loud. Each noise puts him more and more on edge. 

Finally, a full five minutes after the first message, there’s another one. It’s a video this time.

The camera opens up to blinding blue sky and bright, red rock formations towering in the distance. Whoever is holding the camera isn’t being careful about it--the view jostles with each step, and McCree catches glimpses of dry, cracked earth under their boots. 

He can hear them talking, but the roar of the wind is too much to make out any more than the cadence of their speech. Sounds masculine, but McCree can’t be sure. 

The camera shifts up to the front of a ramshackle looking building. The cameraperson laughs, and pushes inside.

The door slams heavy behind them, and there’s only a single shaft of light in the room. 

McCree feels sick when he sees the pulsing, green cybernetic glow in the corner.

Genji looks up--visorless, armorless, _defenseless_ \--and says something in Japanese. The cameraperson laughs, and strides forward. Genji makes a noise like a mechanical snarl.

Hanging above it all is a tattered, black flag, emblazoned with a white, long-toothed skull.

McCree recognizes the Deadlock symbol. He thinks he might be sick.

Any thoughts of responding to the Recall gone, McCree reassembles Peacekeeper, and goes West.

**Author's Note:**

> okay I hope it's not too obvious I haven't written fic in years :P
> 
> I know this is short and has no Hanzo, but I mostly wanted to get this thing out in the open before I edit it to death. He'll show up in chapter 2.
> 
> if you read it, thanks so much!!!
> 
> I'm on tumblr at mccorncob.tumblr.com, if that's your thing.


End file.
